Report by City Scolds Con Ed For Slow Fixes

By IAN URBINA

Published: July 14, 2004

How long does it take to fix a light in New York City? Two and a half years, according to a blistering new city assessment of Con Edison's maintenance of New York streetlights and traffic signals.

Not only does the utility face a backlog of 5,700 broken lights and signals -- a 60 percent increase over last year -- but its use of temporary external wiring to fix serious electrical problems is creating increasing safety risks, the report said.

Con Ed is fully to blame, the city said, for the widespread stray voltage problems that the utility discovered during citywide inspections conducted after an East Village woman was electrocuted by stepping on an electrified steel plate on Jan. 16.

In the report sent last week to the State Public Service Commission, the city's chief lawyer wrote that Con Edison's delay in making permanent repairs ''needs to be addressed to eliminate a situation where stray voltage and other safety problems may continue to occur.''

The report said that the city was still reinspecting the 1,265 faulty poles that the utility had found in its citywide check, completed on Feb. 18, but that in all 619 of the locations reinspected so far, a contractor had already reported wiring problems with the poles.

Michael S. Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Ed, said the difficult winter and the need to conduct sudden citywide inspections had kept the utility behind schedule on its repairs. He said the utility has a plan to get the overall number of broken lights down to 2,000 by the end of the year.

''We take outages very seriously,'' he said, ''but we also always give top priority to residential and commercial customers before addressing streetlight outages that involve our equipment.''

The city hires private contractors to replace burned-out bulbs in streetlights and traffic signals. When those contractors find that the problem is not the bulb but rather the wiring of the light pole, they issue ''stop tags'' that instruct Con Ed to fix it.

The city's report found that Con Ed took an average of two and a half years to respond to those stop tags. A streetlight in front of someone's house or store may be dark for that long, but when the utility does get around to fixing the wiring in the pole, it often uses a temporary repair called a shunt, which the city said only made the problem worse.

''Shunts are nothing more than glorified overhead extension cords, but they are used by Con Edison as permanent repairs,'' the report said. ''They are supposed to be used to provide temporary electricity service to streetlights and especially traffic signals that are not receiving electricity,'' according to the report.

Sometimes traversing several blocks, the shunts run along the outside of the poles, rather than inside, leaving their insulation more exposed to corrosion. Not only are the shunts more likely to leak voltage, the report said, but by depending on them, the utility also leaves the deeper problems uncorrected and growing worse as time passes.

There are now at least 2,500 shunts in the city, some several years old and at least one dating back to 1993, the report said.

The utility said the shunts were necessary to keep the power flowing.

The city's report was a response to a report that Con Ed filed with the Public Service Commission on May 21 discussing the stray voltage problem. In that report, the utility blamed the city for about 38 percent of the poles that were leaking voltage, accepted responsibility for around 43 percent, and said responsibility for 18 percent remained unclear.

But the city disagreed that it bore any fault for the leaking power, noting that all the poles it found had previous stop tags showing that a contractor had previously found a wiring problem.

Gerald A. Norlander, director of the Public Utilities Law Project, a public interest law firm in Albany, said the broken streetlights were part of a larger problem. Con Ed's contract with the city does not give the utility enough motivation to fix problems in a timely fashion, he said. Because the electricity used by the city's light poles and traffic lights is not metered, the city pays a lump sum regardless of whether the bulbs are on or off. ''Con Ed keeps the money even when the city draws less current, so why would the utility be in a rush to fix those bulbs?'' Mr. Norlander asked.

Under the utility's rate agreement, about 3.5 percent of the city's streetlights and signals are allowed to be dark, he noted.

''That leaves far too much wiggle room,'' said Mr. Norlander, comparing Con Ed unfavorably with New York State Electric & Gas Company and Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, which together serve most upstate areas. Their municipal street lighting rules obligate those utilities to provide ''continuous, regular and uninterrupted supply of service'' and assumes failure rate for streetlights around 0.15 percent, he said.

State regulators have also given Con Ed few incentives to increase spending on maintenance. Con Edison charges customers based on budget estimates reviewed by the Public Service Commission when it last set the utility's rates in 2000. By underspending on maintenance since then, Mr. Norlander said, the utility has pocketed an extra $33 million -- the difference between budgeted amounts and actual expenses as cited in a report that Con Ed files in Albany every six months.

Mr. Clendenin rejected Mr. Norlander's criticism. ''In recent years we have invested in the overall maintenance and upgrade of our system well beyond what has been budgeted,'' he said. ''We are constantly assessing the system's needs and making improvements, and we continue to provide the most reliable service in the country.''